The Pictures
Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
*Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award 2017*
World-weary Jonathan Craine is a detective at the LAPD who has spent his entire career as a studio ‘fixer’, covering up crimes of the studio players to protect the billion-dollar industry that built Los Angeles. When one of the producers of The Wizard of Oz is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Craine must make sure the incident passes without scandal and that the deceased’s widow, the beautiful starlet Gale Goodwin, comes through the ordeal with her reputation unscathed.
But against his better instincts, Craine finds himself increasingly drawn to Gale. And when a series of unsavoury truths begin to surface, Craine finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy involving a Chicago crime syndicate, a prostitution racket and a set of stolen pictures that could hold the key to unravelling the mystery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The execution of British screenwriter Bolton's first novel, set in Los Angeles in 1939, falls short of the nifty noir premise. Det. Jonathan Craine is the LAPD's fixer for the movie studios that make the local economy hum. His history of supplying tidy resolutions to messy problems, rather than actual justice, begins to weigh heavily on him after a young woman's murder links back to a blackmail racket out of MGM Studios, just as its chief, Louis B. Mayer, prepares for the premiere of The Wizard of Oz. Bolton has clearly done his homework on pre-WWII Hollywood, but his efforts to evoke the setting are marred by leaden explanations of Craine's motivations, Briticisms, and otherwise sloppy prose. A hard-boiled American detective, for example, is unlikely to eat a meal "with a bottle of claret." Still, Bolton has imagination to spare, and hopefully he'll do better next time.
